She is not, to her mind, an assassin, not a murderer-she is a priestess. It fails to capture the faith and grace, the peace and beauty of her devotion to the God of Death. If they took offense at Kossal’s words, I couldn’t see it.Pyrre Lakatur doesn’t like the word skullsworn. “ Aren’t there enough scales in this miserable cesspool?” I glanced at the warriors behind us. They shrieked with delight, retreated, began to regroup. “To meet the Scales of the gods.” “ Scales?” I asked, seizing the closest spear, blocking two others, then cracking it over the heads of my diminutive attackers. “ Where are we going?” Ruc asked, turning to Chua. The fires washed the southern half of the town in a haze of smoke that smelled of baked fish, and fire-peppers, and sweet reeds. Dozens of clay bowls steamed above carefully banked fires, while skewered meat smoked above steaming palm leaves.
As we drew closer, however, I realized it was clay baked over the surface of the reeds beneath. The line of rafts where the cooking took place looked at first to be hewn of stone. The high windows were hung with stitched tapestries of feather- red and yellow, orange and blue-through which the late-day sunlight poured its warm light, drenching the floor with color. We passed a wide hall-far larger than I would have suspected possible working only with reeds. Wide awnings overhung the fronts of the rafts, shading clusters of mats woven from the rushes. Each house had tall windows to let in the breeze and cleverly contrived blinds to block out the brightest sun. Something built entirely of rushes, the town looked surprisingly comfortable. “ She’s not.” His hands hung slack at his side, but he was ready to fight, eager. And do you know what I told myself?” He drove the last two words like nails into my silence. The sane question was why I should believe you were coming back. “But that wouldn’t have been reasonable, would it? I wasn’t asking myself why I should believe you were gone-that would have been an insane question. I could have believed that just the same way that everyone in this ’Kent-kissing city thinks their gods are going to come back and save them. “I could have believed you just stepped away unexpectedly for a day or two, forgot to leave a note, that you were going to climb back any night through my window and into my bed. “I could have thought you were coming back,” Ruc continued after a moment. “Just because you don’t see a thing, doesn’t mean it’s not there.” “ Is that right?” “I might have been.” “ Might have been what? Hiding just out of sight? Following me around?” “Good Kettral practice.” I’d meant it as a joke, but the line landed like a dead eel on the deck. “That morning back in Sia, all those days after.” I took a slow breath, steadying myself.
Might as well ask me how I knew you were gone.” “ I’m right here.” He shook his head.
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